Cleaning waterproof dog beds

It’s amazing the abuse I give my waterproof dog beds. My dogs live in the garden, where they have a large lawn, a patio, an area of woodland and a pond. On the patio they have two little kennels with warm waterproof dog beds in. I have given them nests to keep it all a bit more cosy after the lovely lining that I had made has come out. Yes, my young dog got very annoyed every time I left her at home and worked the other two, so she used to spend the day pulling all the lining out of the kennel, so they have become slightly draughty now. The nests, however, help keeping the dogs warm and secure round the base.

GWP in a large Dark Red Durasoft nest

Needless to say, it gets terribly muddy out there, especially in the autumn if we have prolonged periods of rain. The patio helps hugely in keeping the beds free of mud, but gradually everything gets covered in mud on the wooden surface and the dogs start dragging it in to the kennels on to the waterproof dog beds. This seems to be no problem at all, however, because nothing goes through to the base of the bed and the stuffing never suffers any damp from this. It’s brilliant because the dogs never sit on a damp, soggy dog bed, but always enjoy total insulation from the floor.I do sneak some blankets in if it’s particularly cold, so they have warm fleece to bury in to. They love digging around and make themselves a cosy place. In nature I assume, that dogs go in to their little cave and take grass etc with them, where they then make their own natural dog beds by digging and moving around.

It’s a miracle, when I occasionally take the beds out to clean, because they never smell and always just seem dusty, which is all the mud, that has dried up and turned in to dust.

Washing the base cushion of the nest

The most incredible about these dog beds is that they don’t smell despite the stuff that is constantly dragged in there. I feed my dogs very raw food indeed. They get tripe daily and sometimes half a chicken, which is often consumed in “privacy” inside the kennel on the dog beds.

Tippex eating a deer head on the patio

I also feed them the odd macabre deer head, which takes them several days to finish and a lot of the eating, again, is done on the dog beds. And yet, there is NO smell. The fact that there are no soft fibres that allow the damp to linger prevents bacteria to dominate and start smelling.